Asia is by far the world's largest continent, covering 30 percent of the Earth's land area. But, amid vast Kazakhstan, arid Uzbekistan, tiny Tajikistan, and vowel-challenged Kyrgyzstan, there was once a nation in the dead-center of Asia that's not there anymore: Tuva.

The short-lived nation of Tannu Tuva.

Tuva has been controlled by various khanates and Chinese dynasties over the centuries, but in 1912 it was invaded by Russia, and the Soviet Union granted it independence as the "People's Republic of Tannu Tuva" between 1921 and 1944. The republic's distinctive triangular postage stamps sparked the imagination of collectors worldwide, including a young Richard Feynman, who would grow up to become one of the great physicists of the 20th century. At the end of his life, Feynman tried to arrange a trip to finally see Tuva in person, but Soviet permission didn't arrive until February 1988, just one day after Feynman's death from cancer.

Here, you can sing a duet alone in the shower.

The Tuvans are a nomadic Siberian people who have been living in birch-bark yurts and herding goats and yaks on the plains north of Mongolia since prehistoric times. The region is now perhaps best known for the distinctive "throat singing" of its folk musicians. Throat singers use incredible vocal control to emphasize the faint overtones of different frequencies produced by their vocal cords as they sing. As a result, they can effectively sing two notes as once, harmonizing with themselves.

Tuva has a fancy monument, but can't show its work.

Today it's politically easier to visit the Russian republic, but it's still hard to get there. No railroad connects to its capital city of Kyzyl, where one of the top sights is an obelisk marking the exact geographic center of the Asian continent. The provenance of this monument is a little iffy. Over a century ago, an eccentric English traveler appears to have calculated that the center of Asia was an estate on the Yenisei River, using methods known only to him, and the people of nearby Kyzyl ran with the idea. After a 2014 facelift, the marker features a giant golden globe sitting on the back of three stone deer, and beneath it a fountain decorated with the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac.

China wants in on the action.

As we've seen before in Europe and South America, measuring the center of continents is a messy task. Asia is particularly tricky, because it has so many islands that may or not be included in the math, and no definitively drawn border on the west with Europe. As a result, China has its own competing "center of Asia" landmark near the city of Urumqi. The math the Chinese used to place the marker was even weirder. They calculated the individual centers of 49 Asian countries, and then built their monument at the average of those points.

Explore the world's oddities every week with Ken Jennings, and check out his book Maphead for more geography trivia.